Basically, writing a character that is supposed to be a loser. Out of shape, lazy, doesn't put effort into anything. But he's still pretty cool. Going for kinda a Peter Quill/Star-Lord character, where, despite appearing cool, and singing and dancing to music and being mildly charismatic, he's still a loser. In my screenplay, the opening scene shows him and his wife breaking-up, and this is where I really try to establish the fact that he's a loser. In the following scene, I show him dancing and grooving, orchestrating his zombie-killing to the music. It's smooth, yet I want to somehow show him being clumsy, and still a loser. Basically, while I want the second scene to be "cool," I still want to show that he HASN'T changed, rather the apocalypse just fits his loser lifestyle perfectly. Here are the two scenes. Any advice for making them portray this character better?
I feel like a stronger action is needed to situate what Jack's mindset is towards what's going on. Brushing his teeth feels too low-key. It doesn't do double duty it's like the mindless action that rolls during the credits. The trouble with having a loser for an mc is the action usually revolves around him, he doesn't initiate it he reacts to it cause his motivation is lacking. Right now it feels overly familiar. Loser's wife leaves him because he's unmotivated and the apartment is a mess, he's so jaded he can only wisecrack. Maybe show the wife as a go-get-um type. "Honey, I rigged up a zip line from our building to the next. I need you to try it out. And once you're over there find me a bottle of Oribe gold lust shampoo none of that Herbal essence crap. And send it back first." "I'm not getting on that death trap."
Why you're getting stuck is because you have two contradicting ideas. You want him to be accomplished yet still a loser, when the very definition of being a loser is that you're NOT accomplished. You don't put any effort into mastering anything or improving yourself. You do barely what is needed to get by and even things they want to do is always half asked. And this becomes compounded when someone thinks they're good at something or going to make it big, but really haven't gone that way. That is the profile of a loser! Wives break up with their husbands all the time, and it's not always because the husband is a loser. So that's not a realistic metric as there are numerous reasons a wife leaves, and it's not necessarily because he's a loser. If you want this idea to work, you have to have skills that are not useful or admired in the real world and he's not particularly good at them. For example, he plays video games all day long. Barely holds down a job, doesn't do extra work even though they need the money. Buys little toys and things centered around video games and draws up plans for his own game, but is too lazy to learn how to use a game engine or code so he can actually build the game. You know, half asked like a loser! Like true loser fashion, wants to just come up with the ideas and everyone else worry about how to do them. but then the zombie apocalypses happens and all the things that he designed for his game like the "flame thrower chain saw" and the "katana shot gun" (because you have to put two things together in order to fight zombies... like seriously, any two things) are suddenly really useful against these zombies. Or he plays guitar under the delusion that he'd make it big some day, but he can barely crank out Smoke of the Water. After fumbling around playing at 50 person venues that don't even sell out, the zombie apocalypses happens. And it turns out his bad guitar riffs have the ability to take them down. Guess whose the loser now? Now everyone living wants him to play.
One thing I definitely want to make sure is that, despite being in the apocalypse, it's a "normal" breakup. Don't want to really add in elements from the apocalypse outside of the zombies being outside and then her stabbing one.
That's actually a very good point. I need to more explicitly give a reason why a loser at the onset of the apocalypse is now perfectly-situated without any actual character growth. Kinda what I was going for with the whole band thing (music is a huge part of his personality), but I know it's not strong (or explicit) enough. I need to find traits that would essentially make one a loser in real life, but could possibly help in the apocalypse. Or even a way to just show that his irresponsibility extends even into the apocalypse. Any ideas?
My immediate response is to say that the coolest loser is the loser who doesn't care that he's a looser. My characters often absorb their otherness. They're walking standards for difference. I have no idea about those superhero characters you mentioned though. Stop making me feel old... even though I'm probably only a handful of years older than the target demographic!
In comedy teams you normally have the magical child and the straight man. With the Three Stooges they modified it so Larry could switch sides and be sort of a secondary straight man at times and a secondary magical child at other times. Also, Moe was the straight man among the Stooges, but in society they all three become magical children though he was always the mean one. The magical child always seems stupid and useless (a loser) compared to the mature social world around him, but when the shit hits the fan, it turns out that the mature people can't solve the problem, what's needed is someone who thinks and reacts differently—a magical child. The very things that were getting him laughed at and then yelled at turn out to be exactly the skills needed to solve the crisis. He sees the magic they can't, until they see him in his own element. In Guardians Peter Quill is an idiot in normal society, but he fits right into the world of the rest of the Guardians, because they're all children in different ways. When Thor shows up, he's even a child in certain ways, enough to fit in and make him a perfect foil for Quill. Thor has a way of changing from movie to movie, like the Hulk's visual look does, so he's whatever is needed in that film. But he also mutates in each film to whatever is needed. He's comical when Quill is jealous and trying to be like him, then he's heroic when needed, and then when he relates his story about how everybody he loves is dead it turns out he's actually a tragic hero (and he's able to play the part). That's when we begin to see that he is indeed a king in the making. Quill does the same to a lesser degree. Sometimes he's a complete screw-up goofball, sometimes he's heroic or romantic, but always with just the right flavor of comic relief thrown in in ways that don't detract from his necessary heroism or romantic-ness or whatever. Think about the scene of him dancing, at the beginning of the 1st Guardians. The way it was presented, he was cool as hell, even as weird as he was, singing into a swamp rat etc. But later, was it in Endgame I think, we saw that exact scene from the viewpoint of (I forget who, was it Nebula and... somebody else?) and because we can't hear the music and the editing isn't done to make it feel heroic etc, he comes across as a total idiot. I think what you need to think about is how you can slide your character this way and that when needed along the loser/cool guy scale. It's partly about who he's being seen against at the time, is he in straight society where he's seen as an idiot and hopelessly immature, or is he among people worse than him? Also, the enemy needs to have some connection with his magical child status. I think zombies do, since they walk around drooling and accomplish nothing. The hero has to have a good dose of the villain in him to be able to fight the villain. Maybe people tell him at the beginning that he's about as motivated as a zombie or a corpse or something. Make the connection, and then he's the only one who understands them well enough to fight them. I probably haven't said anything you didn't already say, I just worded it differently.
No, this is actually really good! Would be a really good line before the cut to the next scene! Perhaps if I do that, and then find something in normal life a loser would do that would help someone in an apocalypse, maybe the second scene won't be so jarring/contradictory. Kinda just looking for a way to still make him unwanted by the (new) woman he loves, and making him have to grow-up in order to win her over (with the help of his ex giving him some perspective).
Have you seen Stripes? When I saw this thread it's the first thing that came to mind. Of course it's a different story, he's a loser who loses his girlfriend and pretty much everything in his life all on one day, and then he joins the military as a last resort and sort of straightens up his act (sort of). Or maybe not. Thinking about it, he kind of does use his loser skills to fix the situation. I don't know, I'd have to watch it again. But I'm thinking the beginning could give you some good ideas for the beginning of yours. One thing I'm thinking is, you should gather some other inspiration, so you don't base your stories and situations too much on a particular one (especially an extremely popular and recent one).
Yeah, I'm definitely trying to do that. Actually, that's how the whole "loser" thing came about. I literally just took my recent break-up, and made it my main character's backstory, lol. I just need to find a way to initially make Jack, the MC seem cool once the apocalypse hits, but show that he's actually still a miserable loser. I guess I'm not sure exactly where I want to go with things. I wasn't going for the "tortured soul" character when it came to my MC, but at the end of the screenplay, he does not get a happy ending. The dog that is being held for ransom is killed, and it makes Jack go nuts. Like, it turns dark as hell, and he goes full Mel Gibson in The Patriot when his son dies, taking out his machete, and just stabbing the guy who killed his dog over, and over, and over again. I feel like in order to justify that happening, I need to torture him just enough to where he's one tragedy away from flipping out and breaking. And I don't think a break-up is enough to do that. I need him to be really down despite him trying to seem cool and collected, have him make a positive turn to get better, and then plummet down once the dog is killed. In writing this, I've thought that perhaps it really does all boil down to responsibility and making selfish decisions. Jack was a loser because he was lazy and made selfish decisions. When the apocalypse hits, being selfish is kinda a great trait, especially for a thief/bounty hunter. Jack doesn't agree to help his ex to help her, he just wants his dog back. He goes through a big character growth, and when they finally arrive at their destination -- the compound of the warlord that is holding their dog captive -- he does something different: he makes a selfless decision. The easy decision would be to hand over the item (something very dangerous in the wrong hands), and get his dog back. But the right decision would be to not allow such a dangerous weapon to get into the hands of such a dangerous person. So he makes the decision to cross this warlord and still save his dog, knowing that it will most likely doom him. But, in growing as a person, and making the right decisions despite the obvious negatives that will come to him, he ends up getting his dog killed, and it undoes all of the character development.
